


Bug Out:  Part 2.  The MASH Unit

by PrairieDawn



Series: Welcome to 1951 [10]
Category: MASH (TV), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, First Aid, Historical Figures, M/M, Minor Character Death, Weapons of Mass Destruction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22974820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: The 4077th bugs out for Seoul with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in tow.  Klingon House Arok makes its move against the Earth duplicate, kidnapping world leaders in order to issue their ultimatum.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, B. J. Hunnicutt/Peg Hunnicutt, James T. Kirk/Spock, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Series: Welcome to 1951 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1033128
Comments: 114
Kudos: 132





	1. In which President Truman doesn't get to bed on time

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am, writing RPF again and somewhat surprised to discover that in 1951, Churchill was not Prime Minister of Great Britain and De Gaulle was not President of France.

“I don’t like you going, sir.” Radar was pale in the predawn light, his face pinched. 

Beside McCoy, Spock came to a stop and placed a hand firmly on the clerk’s shoulder. “Do you ‘like’ our staying here any better?”

Radar considered briefly, his gaze drifting into middle distance. Finally, he focused on Spock’s face. “No, sir.”

“The message is already encoded into the beacon. You need only ensure the power source is connected and initiate the transmission. It will repeat every ten minutes until the generator fails.”

“I know, sir. Klinger and I can handle it.”

“Now you get in that jeep and get out of here as soon as you hit send, or whatever you have to do,” Leonard reminded, more out of a need to put his worry into words than out of any belief that Radar and Klinger would stick around unnecessarily. 

Spock passed Leonard his crutches and hauled himself into the truck, dropping on to the bench beside Kirk. They would spend the four hour trip wedged in with a half dozen other officers and their kit, trunks and duffel bags stacked on the floor between the benches. Charles sat across from them, half-hidden by a pair of steamer trunks. “I for one am glad to be seeing the last of this poor excuse for a hospital,” he groused. Sidney and Mulcahy sat forward, nearer the cab, talking quietly.

Leonard couldn’t have agreed more, but he chose not to voice his opinion, not wanting to get into a contest with the man over who could complain the most vociferously. He caught Spock’s eye. “Get some rest if you can.”

The Vulcan looked around their cramped surroundings and raised an eyebrow. There would likely be no rest for any of them until they reached Seoul. 

“I’m going to check on Private Wilson one last time. Be right back.” Leonard placed his borrowed jacket on the bench to claim a spot before he left for the surgery.

The rain might have stopped yesterday, but the mud was deep and tenacious. It covered his boots and worked its way under his pant legs and into his socks, leaving them stiff and itchy. It resisted him like low quality grav plating, making each step an effort. The camp was dismantled down to a few orphaned, upright four by fours and square concrete pads that once supported the more substantial frame tents. The main building still stood: Pre Op, the surgery, Post Op, Radar’s little outer office with the mess of wires and homemade circuitry under which the camp’s original radio still functioned, and Potter’s office, now emptied of files and knickknacks and pictures of horses.

Off to the left, a lone tent, black oilcloth flapping in the breeze, hid the transmitter. Frank Burns, flanked by two MPs, carried a pair of stacked crates past him to one of the two remaining trucks. 

He found Wilson lying face down on the only bed remaining in the building, exactly where he had lay while Leonard and Hawkeye completed the delicate surgery that, if he was lucky, would allow him to keep the use of his legs. Margaret rested with her back against the bare wall, her eyes focused on her clipboard. Her hair was pulled into a tight regulation bun from which a few tiny wisps had escaped, catching the yellow incandescent light like a halo. Her drab, long sleeved shirt was tucked tidily into the same color pants, everything being the same color here, and cinched tight with a belt. To Leonard, the getup was every bit as alluring as the miniskirted uniform she might have worn if she were a Starfleet nurse in his time. More so.

She would look good in blue. If. He made a show of checking Wilson’s vital signs, first with the medical tricorder and then taking a pulse by hand and squatting down to peer up at the young man’s eyes using the light on the tricorder sensor. Margaret looked through her eyelashes at him. He let himself smile, feeling coy. Wilson was recovering well. He flipped from the chemistry panel to the neuroscan to note that he was still deep in the induced coma that would keep him from moving and further injuring his spine. The neural tracings were, if anything, a little slower than they had been. “Spock been by?”

“Half an hour ago. Said he wanted to make sure the kid would stay down until evening. Still wish we hadn’t run out of morphine yesterday.”

“You and Spock both, I’m sure.” He stowed the medscanner and datapad in his back and crossed the room to prop himself against the wall next to Margaret. He plucked the chart and pencil from her hands on the pretense of reading it, tucked it under one arm and leaned in so their bodies pressed together from shoulder to knees. She tilted her head toward him and he took the offered kiss. She tasted like baking soda toothpaste, and her hair smelled like the perfume she’d sprinkled on her fingers before twisting it up last night. She deepened the kiss first, gripping the hair at the back of his head and pulling him in close so that her knee slipped between his legs. When they broke for air, she said, “You have to go.”

“I’m a vital military asset. They won’t leave without me.” 

At that, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed their foreheads together. “I’ll miss riding to Seoul with you.”

He nodded against her hair. “I’ll find you.”

“Don’t lie.”

Leonard bit his lip and looked away. “Take care of yourself. Get out of here as soon as you can. Has Radar tested the jeep to make sure it will start?”

“Stop it, you!” Her voice squeaked a little on the last word, and that was all it took for Leonard to choke on a sob. “Soldiers don’t cry,” she admonished through her tears.

Leonard sniffed. “I never made a very good soldier.”

There was a soft creak behind them. Someone cleared his throat. Pointedly. Margaret shoved Leonard away from him. He hopped backward, reflexively straightening his clothes and wiping at his face. He was probably covered in her lipstick.

“They’re looking for you,” Klinger said, apologetic. He was holding a bundle in his arms. “Time to go.”

Margaret held out a hand. Leonard clasped it. She turned the gesture into a firm, platonic handshake and who were they kidding, really, after Klinger had just walked in on them canoodling? “It was good working with you,” she said.

“You, too. Don’t do anything brave.”

She chuckled and tugged her hand away. “See you around.”

He didn’t say it back. Klinger walked back to the truck with him, even climbing in behind him to stand in front of Jim and Spock. BJ had arrived since and was slumped on the bench next to Charles, looking as hangdog as Leonard felt. Klinger waited, bundle clasped in front of him until Leonard settled onto the bench beside Spock. “Radar and I had a surprise for you. He found the stuff, and I, well.” He handed the bundle to Leonard. It gave a little, like folded fabric. “Open it. I want to see your faces.”

Leonard pulled twine off the bundle and opened the brown paper wrapping. Black, gold, blue. He shook them out. Two blue shirts in his and Spock’s sizes, the fabric a little different in texture than their own uniform shirts, but the tailoring and rank stripes faithfully reproduced. Their salvaged insignia were sewn in place on the breast. Jim’s command gold had been reconstructed as well, the patch replaced by an applique of gold fabric. Jim grinned his appreciation.

“Your patch was destroyed, Captain. I know it’s not the same.”

Jim traced the outline of the insignia with a finger. “It’s fine, Klinger. More than fine.”

“Don’t wear them until you’re somewhere safer. Those colors will draw fire.”

“Says the man in red gingham,” Leonard snorted.

“Corporal Klinger.” Spock’s voice was soft.

“Yes, sir?”

“Corporal O’Reilly is likely to be distracted by events that are beyond his control. I am counting on you to keep him safe.”

“It’s a full-time job,” Klinger quipped. “Don’t worry sir, I’ll keep an eye on him.”

The truck’s engine started with a sputter and revved. “That’s my cue, gentlemen!” He tipped his wide brimmed, flower trimmed hat and hopped down out of the back of the truck.

Leonard collected the uniform shirts back from Jim and Spock and wrapped everything carefully in the brown paper. The truck rolled forward slowly, creaking and snapping on the boards laid out to keep it from getting stuck in the mud. BJ’s face was turned to the open rear of the truck, his eyes fixed on the remaining buildings until they drove around a corner and out of sight. No one was in the mood to talk.

*

After an hour on the truck, which was making maybe twenty kilometers an hour on the better stretches of road, Jim was missing the cold, damp little frame tent he’d shared with Spock, the cot with its thin, sagging mattress and bedding that smelled faintly of coal smoke and mildew. His spine jolted with every bump and switchback, and his ribs ached even under their tight wrappings. He distracted himself by going over the plan. Again. “So, once we get to Seoul, our main priority is to stay together. Our people will have a better chance of finding us if we’re not separated. The plan as I understand it is to fly us out of Seoul to Clark airbase in the Philippines, and on to Edwards in California.”

“How much strategic and tactical information are you planning to share with these humans?”

Jim firmed his expression. “Everything I know, Spock. These people have been dealt a bad hand by aliens who think they can upend all our lives for their amusement. I don’t intend to add insult to injury. And I don’t intend to hand the Klingons two and a half billion souls on a platter.”

A sharp popping sound stopped all conversation. “Get down!” Spock said, throwing himself over Jim. 

“That sheet metal isn’t going to stop a bullet,” Bones grumbled from beside them on the floor of the truck, wedged tight among their gear.

“It’s better than the tarps,” BJ said. He pitched forward as the truck picked up speed. It felt like it might be catching air, a feat on these roads. Sidney, somewhere in front of them, swore.

After a few minutes, they climbed back into their seats only to take refuge on the floor again from another round of sniper fire. Bones, Hunnicutt, and Winchester pushed the metal boxes and shorter trunks under the seats to block fire while Dr. Freedman and Father Mulcahy tucked sleeping bags and blankets into padding around their bodies so that the seven of them were cocooned in the center aisle against the bouncing and fishtailing of the truck. 

Bullets pinged against the exterior of the vehicle and occasionally inside, thumping into trunks or ricocheting off the metal framing. Jim heard a horribly familiar sound, a shocked grunt. A hiss of pain followed. He struggled to see, but his ribs protested the twisting movement and Spock tightened his hold to keep him low.

“BJ’s hit,” Bones said. “BJ, try to stay still,” he told the younger man. 

Jim could hear BJ’s rapid, strained breathing from where he sat, though he couldn’t see him.

A high, keening sound, like a scream tamped down by force of will, escaped BJ. Bones muttered, “I’ve got to stabilize the arm, BJ. Hold as still as you can.” The bus slammed through another crater in the road. BJ screamed, then gasped an apology.

“Nothing to apologize for.”

Jim managed to move enough to get a look at the surgeon. Bones had BJ’s forearm braced against his own leg, while BJ applied pressure to the wound with his good hand. “Spock, can you get up here? I need another pair of hands.”

Jim scooted toward the rear of the truck to make room, right into Charles. “No matter, Captain, we are all packed in here like sardines. Doctor McCoy, I believe I can reach your medkit,” Charles said, as usual in that impeccable Boston accent. Jim took the kit from Charles, holding it until Spock settled into place on the far side of BJ. 

Bones continued. “Spock, I need you to hold BJ’s arm just below the elbow joint and squeeze tight enough to cut off the blood flow while I repair the vessels and splint the arm. Radius and ulna are both shattered and it looks like there’s involvement of the carpal bones. I’ll have to set it properly later. Jim, I need a splint.”

Charles rummaged in the nearest duffel and came up with the chessboard. He tore it in half at the seam, then pushed half of it, hard, against the edge of his trunk until it creased and folded it the rest of the way down, then repeated the action with the other half of the board. He gave the two stiff, narrow rectangles to Jim, who passed them on. Another bullet zinged through the bus over all their heads and they ducked reflexively.

“This is going to hurt. A lot.”

BJ licked his lips. “More. Than it does. Already?” he managed to say.

“’Fraid so. Try to hold still.”

Spock gripped BJ’s arm above the wound. Jim could detect the squaring of his jaw against reflected pain. “I will assist. If I may?”

BJ nodded sharply. Jim watched Spock’s free hand settle at the surgeon's temple, saw the tension in BJ’s face and body release slightly. Both morphine and ether had run out early yesterday. Spock had spent the afternoon scrubbed into surgery providing anesthesia for their last three surprise patients and had come back to their tent looking as exhausted as the doctors.

Bones worked quickly, running the tissue regenerator over the arm until the bleeding stopped. He tapped Spock sharply on the shoulder. Spock released the pressure on BJ’s arm while Bones inspected it for renewed bleeding. Satisfied, he braced the arm on both sides with the chessboard pieces, wrapping boards and arm in gauze. 

“I need something to make into a sling.” He looked around. “A pair of pants will do.”

Jim started to hand over one of the new pairs of black uniform pants Klinger had given them. Charles plucked them out of his hands to substitute them with a soft pair of drawstring pants with white and blue checks. “These will wrap more easily, I believe,” he said. Jim smiled his gratitude rather than speaking it, allowing Charles to pretend he wasn’t being kind, and passed the pajama bottoms to Bones, who carefully slid one end between Spock and BJ so as not to disturb them, then tied the pants snugly around the arm and BJ’s body to hold the shattered limb immobile. 

Bones sat back to wipe the blood off his hands. Spock withdrew his hand from BJ’s face but settled in beside him, watchful. 

BJ breathed. Slow, careful. In a voice grown suddenly fearful, almost childlike, he said, “I can’t feel my hand. Is that you doing that?”

The silence stretched too long. “It is not,” Spock admitted.

Tears welled up in BJ’s eyes and rolled down his cheeks. “I was a surgeon.”

Bones put an arm around him and said, firmly, “You are a surgeon. We can fix this. Mark my words.”

*

Harry S. Truman did not expect to get much sleep tonight. He missed Bess dearly but didn’t regret his decision to send her to Independence a few days ago. He sat at the writing desk in his bedroom at Blair House, underlining pieces of reports by lamplight. With luck, their guests would be arriving in Washington in a day and he could get some answers about this alien invasion business. For now, keeping MacArthur and an impending financial panic from imploding the country was his top priority.

There was a noise behind him—a ringing, with a metallic quality that grew louder and then abruptly faded, just in time for him to turn his head to look.

Japanese samurai, his brain told him for a split second before he registered the differences. The colors and shapes of the armor, the unfamiliar weapons, the washboard ridges on their foreheads. “Haley, Tiswell, intruders!” he shouted.

The secret service men burst through the door, guns drawn. Two of the men—if they were men—shot weapons already trained on the door. Red light, bright enough to leave violet afterimages on his dark adapted eyes, flashed from the muzzles and his men shrieked once and fell to the floor. The smell of burnt clothing and flesh filled his nostrils and he swallowed, hard.

Large hands grabbed him roughly. One of the men spoke into a small device in an unfamiliar, clipped language. His skin crawled, his vision clouded with sparks, and he was certain he was going to die.

And then he didn’t.

His eyes struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. It looked, superficially, like the interior of a submarine, a little more spacious perhaps. The butt of a gun shoved him forward, interrupting his thoughts. Two very large men, no, a man and a woman, walked him down the hall, faster than he could comfortably keep up, so he stumbled over his own slippered feet on the clanging metal deck. The shapes and angles were wrong, foreign in a much more profound way than the architecture of Japan or the South Pacific. The air smelled like engine oil and bitter sweat.

His captors shoved him into a bare cell. The door banged shut on them and he was alone. 

There was a corrugated metal bench affixed to the back wall of the small cell. Truman paced the length and breadth of the room, studied the walls and peered into the corners. Heavy footfalls beat a rhythm, two soldiers walking in step, up and down the hallway. He counted their steps in an attempt to determine the length of the hall. Twenty minutes later by his watch, he heard three footfalls, one set dragging. A male voice, raspy, shouting in what sounded like Russian. Between his limited knowledge of Russian and the slurring of the words—had the man been beaten?—he couldn’t tell what was being said, but after a moment, he recognized the voice from the summit years ago now. “Premier Stalin, is that you?” he shouted through the door.

A fist pounded on the door to his cell and harsh voices shouted imprecations in that sharp, alien tongue. He returned to the rear of the cell to think. If that man was Stalin, could the aliens be collecting world leaders? To what purpose? He thought back over the letter from James Kirk, a letter he had read enough times he had committed it to memory. These people must be Klingons. He resolved not to bend to their demands.

It was another half hour before the guards’ regular patrol pattern was disturbed again. This time, “There is no need to shove, I can walk,” a prim British public school accent insisted. The heavy thump that followed suggested the man had been shoved to the ground in response.

“Clement Attlee?” Truman shouted through the door.

“Pres—” the response was cut off by a blow. 

A few moments later the door to his cell slid open and one of the gigantic, armored soldiers stomped inside, drew back her arm, and backhanded him across the face so that he fell to the floor, striking his shoulder against the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of him. “Be quiet, human worm,” the woman said, turned on her heel, and stomped back out.

Truman hauled himself to a sitting position. The next breath he took sent sharp pain down his side, making him wonder if he cracked a rib. He felt around on the floor beside him with his good arm until his fingers touched the metal bow of his glasses. He held them to his face. Broken, of course, the bows twisted under his body when he fell, one lens broken. He placed them on the bench, then, impulsively, tore the breast pocket off his flannel pajama top and delicately collected the shards of glass, wrapped them up tightly, and tucked them into the pocket of his dressing gown.

When, some time later, he was awakened by the sound of someone shouting in Chinese, he couldn’t say that he was surprised. He spoke quietly, so as not to be heard outside his cell. “And that would be Mao.”


	2. In which the war to end all wars begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It gets bad.

Francis Mulcahy hunched on the floor of the slaloming truck, his limbs curled uncomfortably in front of him, his head resting on his crossed arms. Spock sat beside him, leaning into his side for balance. Sidney stretched out on his other side, his back to Mulcahy, talking quietly to Jim Kirk. Mulcahy occupied his time saying the rosary, letting the simple repetitive movements and words calm his circling thoughts. 

He had just seen a good man’s career end in an instant. It could as easily have been his life. Instead, Dr. Hunnicutt sat on the other side of Spock with his ruined arm tied to his chest with Winchester’s pajama bottoms. Spock sat quietly, hands steepled in front of him, his eyes closed. A bump set him overbalancing into Mulcahy’s lap. “Pardon me,” he said.

“Oh, that’s quite all right, can’t be helped,” Mulcahy babbled. His rosary had fallen from his fingers with the jolt and he felt around the floor of the truck to find it.

Spock reached under the duffel in front of him. “I believe this is yours.”

He held out his hand to accept the rosary. “My sister, the Sister gave it to me. An ordination gift.”

“A meditative tool.”

Mulcahy opened his mouth to correct him but reconsidered. “I suppose it is at that.” He couldn’t remember the decade he had just completed. “Would you like to see?”

The silence that followed was just long enough to make Mulcahy suspect he was being humored when the Commander said, “Yes. I find human meditative practices an interesting point of comparison with my own.”

Mulcahy lay the rosary flat on his palm so that the crucifix was facing up. “So, I begin by making the sign of the cross, in recognition of Christ’s sacrifice, and then saying the Apostle’s creed to affirm my faith.” He paused to say each prayer quietly before moving on. “Then, on this bead, the Our Father--” 

There was a series of pops, and a ping of ricochet toward the front of the truck, not so unlike any of the others over the past half hour. This time, though, the bus sped up abruptly, rocked from side to side as though it might roll over, then came to a sudden, jolting stop that pitched Mulcahy into Spock’s lap.

“Stay down!” Kirk shouted, his voice sounding unnaturally loud without the background noise of the engine.

The passenger side door opened, then slammed closed. In a moment, Potter peered into the back of the truck. His face was flecked with droplets of red. “Is everyone all right back here?”

They all checked each other for wounds. Potter continued, “Major Winchester, Father, I need you out here. The rest of you stay put.”

Mulcahy extricated himself from the group, then clambered out of the back of the truck along with Winchester. They made their way around to the front of the truck. Igor slumped in the driver’s seat, his arm hanging out the window with a red rivulet pooling in the curled palm of his hand.

He reached up to trace a cross on Igor’s forehead. His thumb came away bloody. He began the prayer for Igor’s soul almost mechanically, as he would for any soldier who hadn’t made it through triage until he recalled the man stoically enduring the many unfair remarks about his cooking, offering extra leftovers to Radar, putting up willingly with Klinger’s shenanigans. His voice broke.

Charles opened the door so that they could catch Igor between them. They carried the body back into the truck. McCoy stood, snatching at his bag as soon as he saw them, reaching for Igor’s shoulders to help lay him gently across a bench. He ran the medical tricorder over Igor’s face, past the fixed and wide open eyes, then shook his head. “Damn it all to hell,” he muttered.

Mulcahy folded himself into the small space next to the body to pray for Igor’s soul, and for all of theirs. Igor, unlike most of his motley flock at the 4077th, had been Catholic. He’d been to confession only a couple of days before, anticipating their hazardous journey and well aware of the greater dangers to follow. 

“There are ten to twelve individuals moving toward the truck,” Spock said, quietly.

Potter turned back to hop into the driver’s seat. The rest of them crunched themselves back into their spots on the floor of the truck. The truck revved but didn’t move. Mulcahy hurriedly returned the tools of his office to his pockets. The faint sounds of bodies moving through the bush were supplemented with the sound of Korean voices. Kirk whispered urgently, “We are outnumbered and outgunned. Our mission is to survive to deliver intelligence about the Klingon invasion. These people are not our enemies—or won’t be by this time tomorrow.”

The Koreans who weren’t their enemies began banging on the sides of the truck. “How about you tell them that, Captain,” McCoy said. The truck went silent again.

Spock replied, “The fact that they have not yet shot Colonel Potter is a hopeful sign.”

Mulcahy didn’t let himself think about the quieter ways one man could kill another in war. The double doors at the back of the truck swung open. The belongings stowed in the back were pulled out and thrown on the ground. Winchester followed the trunks and duffels out the back of the truck, his hands held high over his head. Kirk followed, then McCoy, who waited near the doors to help BJ. Mulcahy knew that injured men who could not keep up were often shot and left on the side of the road to die. He wondered how many miles they would have to walk this muddy road to reach wherever their captors planned to take them.

Spock collected his crutches from where they had been stowed under the seats, perched briefly on the truck bed, then swung expertly over to the hummock where the rest of them had been directed. They all sat close together on the grass, their hands laced behind their heads. Three soldiers stood over them, their rifles casually pointed downward into the group. Mulcahy slid out of the back of the truck, put his hands on his head, and joined them. If they were all going to be shot, this would be a likely time. Mulcahy didn’t dare speak, but in his head, measuring the words as though he were saying them aloud he thought, the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…

Kirk, beside him, said, “He says to get up.”

They stood. “You speak Korean?” Mulcahy asked.

“Universal translator.”

Their captors pointed down the road in the same direction they had been traveling. Mulcahy stood. His pants had become soaked from sitting on the sodden grass. Behind him, he could hear the soldiers talking. They pointed their guns at the patches of wet on the seats of Winchester and Kirk’s pants and laughed unkindly. Mulcahy wondered again how far they would have to walk with their hands on their heads. The Korean soldier in charge turned each of them against the side of the truck and patted them down, confiscating flasks and knives and anything else they found appealing. The rosary clicked softly in the soldier’s hand when he pulled it from Mulcahy’s pocket. McCoy’s bag sparked considerable interest. Fortunately, this group seemed to be led by someone with some capacity for strategic thought: Though they did not return the bag to McCoy, neither did they destroy it or damage the contents. It was given to a boy to carry along with Spock’s tricorder.

They were pushed into line to walk single file past the truck and down the road toward Seoul. Mulcahy swallowed hard when they passed the front of the truck, steeling himself to see Potter lying mangled in the mud, but he wasn’t there. He wasn’t ahead, only Kirk and Winchester were, so perhaps he was in the rear of the group? He didn’t dare turn his head to see.

They followed the tall grass at the edge of the road rather than the muddy ruts, but it was still slow going. When they turned a corner, Mulcahy caught sight of Potter bringing up the rear, with Spock directly ahead of him on his crutches. All eight of them accounted for, he breathed a silent prayer of thanks. Spock managed with remarkable grace on the uneven ground, but it became clear quickly that both Kirk and Hunnicutt were struggling. There were groups of civilians trudging down the road toward Seoul with their belongings on their backs. They all scrupulously avoided looking at the string of prisoners of which Mulcahy was a part, as though their very scrutiny might draw fire.

They reached a checkpoint. Mulcahy’s heart raced. He steeled himself to ask permission to offer absolution to his companions at the end, should it come to that. Dying last would be no privilege, merely a grave responsibility. A giggle escaped his throat. Grave responsibility indeed. He must be becoming hysterical.

A tall, sun wrinkled man with a pair of rifles slung across his body spoke to their escorts, gesturing toward all eight of them. He drew a finger across his throat.

Behind him, McCoy shouted. “We’re doctors. From the 4077th. We can help with your wounded.”

The lieutenant in charge of the checkpoint approached, rifle raised as though to strike McCoy. He stood his ground.

“All of you doctors?”

“Doctors and field medics,” McCoy lied.

“You walk to the camp, treat our wounded. You don’t keep up, you die. Understand?” He directed his remark to where Spock and Hunnicutt stood side by side.

Potter answered for them. “We understand.”

“You better, old man.”

*

When they came for Truman next, the woman who had shoved him clipped a device to his shirt, tapped it, and then spoke, in plain if gruff English. “You will come with me.”

Truman considered fighting her but decided that there was nothing to be gained from inviting another beating. He walked beside her, mustering as much dignity as a man could in slippers and a dressing gown. Moving about without his glasses left him feeling naked and vulnerable. Facial expressions were smoothed into invisibility, lights spread into dinner plate sized doilies of refraction. They reached a door that led into a semicircular room not quite large enough for the table and chairs wedged in along its curved wall. That wall was dominated by a clear window, beginning at waist height and extending to about ten feet high and spanning about 12 feet long. Outside that window loomed a blackness much deeper than he’d ever seen before and a curve of sunlit blue-white. He assumed that were he wearing his glasses, he would be able to see stars.

Prime Minister Attlee of Great Britain and President Auriol of France had preceded him. Like Truman, both were in their nightclothes, though neither had even the luxury of a dressing gown. They must have been rousted from their beds. Auriol fiddled nervously with the cuffs of his nightshirt. Attlee greeted Truman with a curt if subtle nod. There was the sound of a scuffle from the corridor outside the room. Two more of the soldiers—Truman chastised himself for being unable to reliably tell them apart—wrestled an Asian man in a military uniform into the room and half-threw him into the seat next to Auriol. Auriol flinched. The man Truman presumed to be Chairman Mao underneath the bruises turned his face to their captors, but said nothing.

Another one of the aliens stood at the head of their small table, resting his fists aggressively on its surface. He addressed a subordinate. “Where is the Soviet?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. “Josef Stalin is dead. The physician states he had a stroke in his cell.”

The alien in charge bared his teeth. “You were charged with acquiring the leadership of this planet alive!”

“He was old and frail. There was nothing to be done!”

The alien lifted his weapon and briskly, almost casually, shot another one of those lines of red fire at his subordinate. The subordinate crumpled to the floor. “Clean up that mess.” Two more aliens rushed to comply. 

He turned back toward the table. “I am Wakod, of House Arok. I claim your world in the name of the Klingon Empire. You will instruct your people to obey.”

“The People will never tolerate subjugation!” Mao shouted.

Wakod leaned down into his face. “If you intend to remain alive, you will see that they do.” He pushed away from the table hard enough to rattle it and paced toward the window. Grandstanding. “You will return to your homes with an escort of four of my warriors. You will immediately begin whatever processes your governments use to transfer power to governors of my choice. If any of your escorts is harmed, you will lose one city. Is that clear?”

Not one of them chose to answer. Truman was still struggling with the knowledge that Josef Stalin had died. Who in the Politburo would replace him> Who could match his ruthlessness and charismatic personality? The Soviet Union was young, fragile, and refractory at the best of times. Would its people become an unruly mob in the absence of their leader?

Wakod’s voice cut through his musings. “I said, is that clear?”

Auriol squeaked, “Yes,” but then caught Attlee’s eye and snapped his mouth closed.

“I understand, but I do not agree to cooperate,” Attlee said primly. “The British Empire did not crush one evil conqueror to welcome another. We will endure.”

“I think not,” Wakod sneered. “And you, President Truman, do you too intend to defy the Empire?”

“I couldn’t get the American people to submit to foreign rule if I wanted to,” he said, taking refuge in the plain truth.

“Then you will require a demonstration. Gesh, target Shanghai, China, San Francisco, California, and Manchester, England with photon torpedoes. Turn the ship so that Shanghai is visible from the observation deck.”

The view changed so that more of Earth’s glowing blue, brown, and green were visible. A weapon that was targeted at an entire city was likely to rival Fat Man and Little Boy in its power. Truman wondered what the wisest course of action was. If he pretended to capitulate, would that save or cost lives?

“Stop!” he said, hoping to buy time. “At least find a replacement for Stalin before we move forward. Find Malenkov or Beria. We must all have time to consider how to ensure our people’s cooperation.”

Attlee stared, mouth open. Auriel nodded along with Truman’s words. “It is not a matter of whether to ensure the cooperation of our people, but how.”

“Elite cowards willing to sacrifice your people to buy your own safety!” Mao protested. 

Wakod spoke. “Gesh, stand down. We will wait until a suitable representative for the Soviets can be found. Two hours,” he added. “Tanakh, B’Kir, assemble a team and locate this Malenkov.”

Two soldiers turned on their heels and left the room.

“We will wait here. Ezon, bring refreshments for myself and our guests. It is an auspicious day!”

He clapped Truman on the back hard enough to make him stumble. Truman would have given five years of his life to be left alone with the other humans in the room, but even if Wakod and his remaining entourage left them here, they would no doubt be talking to bugs. Wakod directed them to seats. Truman ensured he was seated next to Attlee and rested his right hand below the level of the table on Attlee’s thigh. The Prime Minister pulled an offended face, but Truman shook his head once, sharply and began tapping in Morse code with a finger. STALL HELP COMES

Attlee, to his credit, didn’t even look at Truman. In a moment, an answer came, tapped onto his left knee. WHAT HELP

He was interrupted in his task by the arrival of three large plates containing some sort of grain dish with oval-shaped somethings in it, small bowls of a dark sauce, and what looked like whole squab. Truman didn’t dare eat or drink any of it, and not just because the mix of odors was decidedly off putting. Mao sat rigid in his seat, looking into the distance as if attempting to distance himself from the rest of them. 

Truman took a moment to figure out exactly how to explain the kind of help that might appear. He settled on SPACE NAVY.

YOURS?

ALLIES, he tapped, hoping that would turn out to be true.

A soldier entered the room to whisper into Wakod’s ear. Wakod spun on his heel to look out the window. “These humans cannot send messages through subspace. The Federation is aiding them. How?” He rushed the table. “Where did this technology come from?”

Truman kept silent. 

“It has to be Kirk. He was missing from the bridge of his own ship.”

Truman hoped he had been able to keep his face from betraying him at the name.

Wakod wheeled on the four world leaders at the table. “This planet belongs to the Klingon Empire. The Federation cannot help you. You will surrender, unconditionally, immediately!”

Mao spat.

Wakod barked orders into the air. “Kraik, take a team of nine down to the transmission site. Bring back whoever is responsible. Alive. The dead can tell no secrets. And Gesh, as soon as Malenkov is in our hands, fire on all targets.”

Mao flew to his feet. “You cannot do this! The People will crush you beneath their feet. We are too many for you to kill—” a swift blow to the face silenced him. He spat teeth into his hand.

Attlee, beside Truman, pushed back his chair. Truman gripped his leg. His left hand slid into the pocket of his dressing gown to finger the bit of fabric containing the shards of his eyeglass lens. Not yet. Not when it would do no good. He wondered why San Francisco was the target in his own country rather than Washington.

Attlee, Truman, and Auriol stared down at their plates. The beetles in the grain dish twitched. Truman thought he might be imagining it, but when he kept an eye on a particularly large specimen near him, he saw its leg bend and straighten, slowly, as though it were deciding whether or not to be dead. Mao had not yet risen from where he’d been knocked to the floor, but Truman could hear his harsh breathing.

Wakod glared at them, more irritable than truly angry. “Eat!” He ordered.

No one moved. Wakod snatched one of the squab from its plate and tore a bite out of it. The hum of hidden machinery was the only sound aside from Wakod’s chewing and pacing. Attlee took advantage of the lull to tap, TELL ME NO MORE NOW. Of course, it was best for the moment that they limit the amount of intelligence that could be obtained from any one of them. Attlee knew what the Klingons had already revealed with their own words, and that would be enough for now.

Several minutes later, there was another round of footsteps from the corridor behind the wall and another man, this one in suit pants and a dress shirt, the jacket missing, entered the room flanked by a pair of guards. Malenkov was a round faced, doughy man with a surly expression at the best of times. Now, his mouth hung slightly open and his eyes were wide and roving around the room.

“Ah, our final guest!” Wakod said. “Gesh, time to target?”

“Fifteen seconds.”

“You will see shortly that resistance will earn you only death.” He gestured toward the large window. In a moment, his companions gasped in horror. Truman could see nothing but blurred pastel tones.

“As I said. You will return to your people and prepare for a transfer of power. Get these men planetside. I no longer wish to view their pasty faces.”

Hands grasped Truman by the upper arms and steered him out of the room and down another clanging corridor. One of his guards turned to him. “You are a cold man, to watch millions of your kind turn to vapor without flinching.”

They clearly didn’t know that he could barely see. “Human beings would rather die than forfeit our freedom,” he asserted, sounding more certain than he felt.

He was pulled onto a platform. Two more guards arranged themselves around him and in a moment, his vision blurred and the tingling itch of their peculiar mode of transportation enveloped his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're moving inexorably toward endgame at this point.


	3. In which Leonard saves a child and makes a friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The captured evacuees are led to a field hospital north of Seoul, where they find that the invasion has begun.

Leonard was getting too old for this. Hell, they were all too old for this, even BJ, who he wasn’t sure had hit thirty. To his too-experienced eye, the North Koreans looked nervous. Twitchy. Their hands strayed to their gun stocks too often. They jumped and shouted angrily when a prisoner stumbled or snapped a twig with an ill placed foot.

His initial terror had not subsided, exactly. He’d become accustomed to it over the last hour of walking. It simmered under his breastbone, bubbling over when he detected signs of fatigue in Jim or Spock. For the second time, Jim stumbled. Leonard heard the ratcheting of a round being chambered. “Now hold up,” he said, trying to keep his voice smooth and soothing. 

Their captor hesitated. Jim struggled to his feet. McCoy tried to get the teenager to focus his attention on him and not on Jim or Spock. “This man may not look like much right now, but he’s a very important person. Our people will pay handsomely for his return.”

“Pay?”

“Yes. He’s a good trade.”

The teenager’s superior stalked up to stand beside him. The younger one spoke, this time in the Korean McCoy’s implant let him understand but not reproduce. “This one says the injured prisoner is valuable.”

“He’s probably lying,” the group leader said.

“Should I shoot him now?” The young one raised his gun.

His superior put a hand flat on the barrel to push it toward the ground. “No need. Let this one walk with him. If they can’t keep up, shoot them both.” Leonard stayed where he was, pretending not to have understood their conversation.

“You. Help him keep up,” the younger one ordered. 

Leonard moved to support Jim with his body. Their proximity gave them a chance to talk to each other. Jim muttered, “I’m not as bad off as I look.”

“So you telling me this is a ploy?”

Jim was silent for a time as they trudged along the edge of a freshly plowed field. “Not entirely,” he said, more breathlessly than Leonard liked to hear. “That was good thinking, implying all of us are doctors, but exactly how do you plan to keep that charade up once we get wherever we’re going?”

Leonard grunted under Jim’s weight. “I’ve supervised your first aid recertifications for years. Spock’s too. And Mulcahy’s been pressed into service as a corpsman enough times he’s plenty capable of holding his own.”

“We’d better hope so.” Kirk’s eyes kept roving their surroundings. The horizon, the clumps of vegetation, their fellow captives, and each of the four men and two boys holding them prisoner held his attention for a few moments at a time. Escape seemed unlikely and riskier than cooperation at this point, but it paid to pay attention in case the situation changed suddenly.

“How’s Spock holding up?” he asked.

“You know him, he can keep this up for days. Or claims he can.”

Leonard fell silent for a moment, watching Mulcahy walking beside Hunnicutt, reaching out a hand to steady him from time to time when their guards weren’t looking their way. “They’re our people now. I won’t let us be extracted and leave them behind.”

Kirk grunted when his foot hit the ground hard enough to transfer the shock all the way up their bodies. “If local people pull us out, we might be able to manage that. Federation forces aren’t going to look kindly on bringing aboard half a dozen people from a pre-warp civilization.”

“I won’t leave them in the hands of the North Koreans.”

Kirk looked toward BJ, the man with a wife and baby waiting for him. “If they go with us, there’s a good chance they would never be able to go home. You want to make that decision for them?”

He didn’t, not really. 

The monotony of the afternoon was broken when they arrived at a fallow field marked with red flags at the corners. A stream swollen from the spring rains bordered one side, a long run of barbed wire fence the other. Their captors made them sit on the ground in a row while they discussed the minefield just out of earshot. They made a beeline to Hunnicutt. “You cross. We follow.”

Hunnicutt struggled to his feet. Beside him, Mulcahy pulled him down and tried to stand. “I’ll go in his place.”

Of all the self-sacrificing—Leonard raised both hands in the air. “I’ll go. My machine can find land mines.”

Two gun barrels swung toward him and he held his breath. When he did not die immediately, he repeated himself. “That box there. It’s a mine detector.” He gestured to Spock’s tricorder.

“I have heard of no mine detectors this small,” the group leader said to the boy carrying the gear.

“It’s too light to be a weapon,” the kid said.

The leader took the tricorder off the kid’s shoulder, pushed a couple of buttons and peered into the screen. Leonard tried to remember exactly how that model worked so he wouldn’t have to fumble with it in front of their captors, or to be honest with himself, Spock. The last thing they needed was Spock trying to navigate a minefield on crutches. The team leader shrugged and tossed the tricorder to Leonard. “Let him try. It will be fun to watch.” He turned toward Leonard. “You go.”

Leonard took a few seconds to remind himself of the interface, which fortunately was similar to the medical tricorder. “Steel, right?” he asked no one in particular.

Potter risked responding. “That should work.”

Leonard keyed the tricorder to detect concentrations of iron in the soil around him. The tiny screen would provide a 2d map he ought to be able to use to navigate. When he moved to the edge of the field, the guy in charge shoved the kid into line behind him, handing him a bundle of sticks and torn rags, presumably to mark their path. Leonard almost opened his mouth to argue—the kid couldn’t be more than twelve and Leonard would have guessed closer to ten. He was pushing his luck with the amount of backtalk he’d given their captors already and chose discretion. If he knew, Spock might have been proud.

“Stay close,” Leonard told the boy, remembering belatedly that without a translator implant of his own, the kid probably couldn’t understand a word he said. 

He swept a semicircle of ground ahead of him before moving, collected sticks topped with rags from the boy, and placed markers carefully before walking forward a pace at a time. Sweep, mark, step. Sweep, mark, step. Fifteen paces to the opposite side of the field, his heart in his throat the whole time. He and the boy stood, alone, on the far side of the minefield. It occurred to Leonard that if he ran, right now, he had a good chance of getting away. The boy’s weapon was slung on his back, closer to Leonard’s hands than the boy’s own.

The other prisoners began picking their way toward him, single file. BJ led the way, followed by Mulcahy, then Sidney, Charles, Potter, Jim, and finally Spock. If he grabbed the gun, he could get his gear away from the kid. And the other five men guarding them would open fire on the rest of the prisoners. Their captors followed close behind Spock. There was no way he could see to separate them. He was sure Jim could have found a way to work the situation to their advantage, but he was a doctor, not a tactician.

The moment passed, they all made the crossing, and no one lost a leg this time. It was back to trudging through overgrown, muddy jungle and small cleared fields for them all. On the bright side, the few minutes rest seemed to have given Jim a second wind, so he leaned a bit less heavily on Leonard for a while.

By the time they arrived at a cluster of brush covered tents, the sun had moved appreciably in the sky. He guessed it was mid afternoon. Men and surprisingly to him, women and children lay on pallets on the ground in front of overfilled tents. They’d been led to the local equivalent of a mobile hospital, it seemed, one without even the meager resources the 4077th had.

He dropped to his knees beside a child, perhaps four years old, with wide, frightened eyes and too-pale lips. “Can I have my bag, please,” he said.

There was no response. He stood back up, looking for the kid who had been carrying his things, and shouted, “I said, can I have my bag?”

The bag was tossed to him and he went back to work. Repairing the wound to the child’s thigh was a simple matter, but she needed blood to replace what she’d lost. He pressed a microsampler to her finger to get a type. O positive. He and Jim were both A positive, so that wouldn’t do. “Father, could you bring Colonel Potter? He’s Type O.”

“Right away.”

A hand on the back of his shirt yanked him to a standing position. “Help one who can fight,” the leader of their captors said.

“If this child doesn’t get blood right away she will die!” Leonard protested.

A tall, frowning woman on a mission stalked over to the two of them. “Ji, get out of here. You’re on my turf now and I decide who gets treated. She turned back to Leonard and said, this time in halting English. “You have needles and tubes?”

Leonard riffled through his bag again. “I’m out. Anything you’ve got would help.”

Mulcahy returned with Potter in tow. Potter dropped to his knees beside the child and felt for a pulse. “Take what you need, I’ve got plenty,” he said. “It’s not just going to run right back out of her, is it?”

Leonard favored him with an exasperated look and he rolled up his sleeve to present his forearm. The woman returned with a small cloth wrapped bundle. The needles had clearly been used several times, as had the tubing and while he suspected they had been boiled, he couldn’t be sure. He pulled out the small glass bottle of contemporary disinfectant that had replaced his own supply weeks ago and meticulously wiped down the needles and clips, then poured a little of the solution into the tubing, following it with a much diluted rinse made from the remainder of the water in his canteen. 

Potter knew better how to set up the line with the technology available, so Leonard let him take the lead and soon he was squeezing his fist around a bit of rag to aid the flow of blood into the little girl, who watched him solemnly. Their captors largely left them alone while they worked. Leonard looked up to see Mulcahy bent over another patient on the ground, serving as BJ’s hands and beside him, Jim and Winchester worked on a second. Local doctors circulated among them, clearly judging their technique, in between treating their own patients. Leonard didn’t begrudge them their caution; he remembered feeling the same way about Hawkeye and BJ less than a month ago. Spock and Freedman seemed to have been assigned to changing bandages. Another child, a boy of about eight with a bandaged stump and improvised crutches, chattered beside them.

The middle aged woman who had intervened n Leonard’s behalf before argued loudly with the man who had brought them in. None of them appeared to have realized that he, Jim, and Spock could understand every word they said, regardless of their inability to make themselves understood in Korean.

Another few moments watching Freedman and Spock made him correct his assumption. Spock was clearly conversing with the boy and a young woman who had joined them. He must have, in between building the transmitter and looking after Jim in his convalescence, found the time to learn enough Korean to make himself understood.

He turned his attention back to the argument as soon as he realized that he and the other prisoners were its subject. “We need doctors more than we need prisoners, Ji!”

“They will turn on us. It is their duty. You cannot trust Americans.”

“These men are from the MASH unit in Uijeongbu. They have treated our people many times. I am just glad you brought them all here alive, or they would likely be less willing to help.”

Leonard finished bandaging Potter. The two of them moved on to the next patient. A radio sputtered static from its perch on a small stool beside an even smaller camp stove. Ji stalked the camp, ensuring with blows to their backs that they were dissuaded from speaking to each other more than necessary. By chance, Leonard was in earshot when the words, “nuclear strike on Shanghai” caught his attention. In a few moments, everyone in the camp capable of moving had crowded around the radio and his translator could no longer pick up the words through the ambient chatter.

Ji pointed a gun at him. “The Americans have used their nuclear bomb. No more mercy for them.”

There was a click of a round being chambered behind Ji. The woman in charge of the camp pointed a handgun at him. “I am tired of you endangering everyone here. You are no longer welcome. Take your men and go. You heard. Westerners’ cities have also been destroyed.”

Ji barked and order and his men clustered around him.

“Leave Ki-tae here,” she added, catching the youngest boy by the arm and pulling him away from the group.

Ji looked like he was going to protest, but his posture softened in a moment and he ruffled the boy’s hair. “Look after him,” he said. He gestured with his chin and the rest of them followed him, single file, into the bush.

“What cities?” Leonard asked, his mouth dry.

“Shanghai. Manchester, England. San Francisco, United States.” She shook her head. “The Soviets have turned on us all.”

Leonard decided that arguing with her right now would be counterproductive. The truth would out soon enough. Instead, he held out a hand. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” he said. 

She bowed over his hand. “My name is Seo-yun.”

“Leonard McCoy,” he said.

Potter strode over to the two of them. “You need to come and listen. Now.”

“Seo-yun!” An elderly man called. Leonard and Seo-yun jogged over to take places as quietly as possible near the radio.

The voice continued in Korean, Leonard noted intentionally. It was easy to allow the universal translator to lead him to believe that everyone spoke Standard everywhere, but with a little effort he could hear the foreign sounds underneath the words the translator delivered to his temporal lobe. “Again, we do not know if this message is a hoax. We will play it again in its entirety. The words are Chinese, English, Russian, and French. The message is the same.” There was a subtle shift in the background noise, indicating a recording was running. “Human residents of planet Earth. You are declared subjects of the Klingon Empire. Your governments are subject to Klingon rule. You will obey all orders of the Empire and its representatives. Resistance will be met with swift and certain death. For the Empire!” Leonard listened to the same chest thumping announcement three more times in three additional languages, then the broadcaster returned. “At this time, there is no official government response to these events.”

“It has to be a hoax,” Seo-yun said.

Leonard thought. “Do you have two way radio? If you let us contact our own people we could compare stories, see if they match up.”

Seo-yun regarded him warily. “How do I know you will not call an air strike to this place?”

“What would ease your mind, ma’am?”

She considered. “I don’t know. Probably nothing.” She looked around at the people clustered around the radio. Her people, he realized, as much as he and Spock were Jim’s. “You may make the call.” She led Potter away with her into a tent much smaller and more fragile looking than the building in which the 4077th housed its radio. By the looks of it, this camp moved more on the order of once a week than once every few months.

Leonard took the opportunity to visit with Jim and Winchester. “So, it’s started.”

“We’ve lucked out with that Seo-yun,” Jim replied.

“She has a remarkably cool head, for a woman,” Winchester remarked. “Did you know she used to be head nurse at the largest hospital in Pyongyang?”

“Nurses keep their heads better than most doctors in my experience,” Leonard corrected. 

“Perhaps,” Winchester allowed, his tone still dubious. “I assume that our failure to make the rendezvous point in Seoul has been noticed by now.”

Jim nodded. “I’m sure it has. Potter tells me that a Navy Special Ops team will be dispatched up the road to meet us if we fail to show up.”

Leonard considered the several children among the dozens of noncombatants in the camp, many of whom couldn’t just pick up and run away when potentially trigger happy Americans arrived. “I’m not sure I like the idea of the American military meeting us among their enemies.”

“Don’t you mean our enemies?” Winchester said.

“Not if I can help it.” Leonard noticed Seo-yun coming toward them with Colonel Potter. “Not American, remember?”

“Last I checked, Georgia was part of America.”

“Last I checked, Georgia was a part of Earth and the United Federation of Planets.”

Winchester looked askance at him. “You sure you’re not a Commie?”

“I’m not in favor of authoritarian governments of any stripe.” This conflation of political and economic systems was giving him a headache, and he wasn’t as well versed in Earth history as Jim was. “The way Earth allocates resources in my time has no bearing on the way we are governed.”

“And how exactly are you governed?”

Leonard reached back to his sixth grade civics class for an explanation that might make some sense in the time they had. “Earth has an elected President and a representative government with a thousand members drawn from regional governments around the world and the lunar colonies. Regional governments use a mix of direct democracy and elected representatives. My home region is Southeast America. Jim is Central Plains American.”

“And Spock?”

“The human side of his family is from the New York region.”

“The idea that the United States could break into pieces. It doesn’t seem quite real.” Winchester regarded the horizon, his hands tucked neatly into his pockets.

Potter stopped in front of Jim and Spock and gestured McCoy to approach. “There’s a Naval Special Ops team on their way with vehicles to take us out of here. They’ve offered medical supplies and support to the camp here in trade for your safe passage.”

“The rest of the prisoners from the 4077th come with us,” Jim insisted.

“Along with as many of the worst injured as we can fit in the fortified bus they’re bringing for us. They’ll be here in an hour. Give Seo-yun a triage list.” He ran a hand through his dusty, thinning hair. “Prioritize folks who need advanced medical treatment. We don’t know if we’re driving toward the fire or away from it. The kids might well be safer here than in Seoul.”

“Probably will be safer under the circumstances. We’ll have your list.”

Winchester straightened beside him. “We have a job to do, let’s hop to it,” he said, sounding glad for the distraction. “I’ll make a list from these two tents and you take the other two. Potter has enough on his plate already.”

Within half an hour they had a list of six patients who would likely not survive without the aid of the hospital in Seoul. Leonard had used his instruments to improve the condition of a dozen others to give them the best chance possible. Potter approached them as they finished tagging the beds. “My lookout sees the bus coming around the bend.”

The bus rolled up and disgorged half a dozen marines, all stone faced and festooned with weaponry. Even so, it seemed anticlimactic to load stretchers into the back, then climb aboard without resistance from the Koreans around them. He took a moment to thank Seo-yun, without whom the day could have turned out so differently. As he climbed into the bus, he stopped again, compelled to give a last word of advice. “Stay out of the cities until this all blows over. It’s bigger than the US, China, and Russia put together, I guarantee it.”

She bowed in response. He watched her out the reinforced window of the bus as they pulled onto the rutted, muddy road away from the camp. Her arm was around the boy he’d led through the minefield. He wished them luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With all the stuck-at-homeness of the next few weeks, I'm hoping to have more time to write. We'll see how that goes and I hope you all take advantage of you at-home time to do some things you've been putting off.


	4. In which there's a lot of riding around in airplanes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group is split still further, with BJ, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy traveling to the United States while the rest of the MASH unit stays behind in the Philippines.

When the shimmering faded, Truman found himself in an empty conference room in Blair House, his four escorts grouped in a half circle around him. He walked to the end of the long table to pick up the phone. One Klingon guard stationed himself at each of the three entrances. The fourth shadowed Truman close enough for him to smell oiled metal and bitter ash. He picked up the phone receiver and dialed out to his usual security detail. “Can you get me Bill? This is Supervise.”

The line went on hold for a tense half minute. Truman prayed no one would come in the room. “This is Bill.”

“Bill, I’m back. I’m not alone. I’m in conference room B accompanied by a four man Klingon security detail. It is imperative that--”

“What the hell is that?” Shouts in the corridor outside the conference room made him fall silent for a moment. Running feet, several of them, converged on the largest doorway. His shadow grabbed him by the upper arm so that he almost bobbled the phone. He flinched from three gunshots in close succession followed by the high pitched whine of the Klingon weapons. One of his guards lay on the ground by one of the doors, a bloody two handed blade lying beside him.

“Damn it all, Bill, your men have killed one of them.” Truman looked up at the sound of one of his other guards muttering into a communications device. “Stand down. I repeat, stand down!”

The footfalls outside the conference room stilled. Bill, on the line, said, “What’s going on in there?”

“I am in the company of hostile invading forces. If one of my escorts dies, their leadership destroys another city. Your people just killed one of them.” The line went silent. He was on hold again, but only for a moment. “Supervise, this is Matt Daley, I need a situation report.”

The complex ringing of the Klingons’ transportation device caught his attention. Five more aliens in battle gear appeared in the room and moved to reinforce their companions at each of the doors. They spoke to each other in their native language, untranslated. The one holding his arm led him to a chair and pushed him down into it. “Keep talking,” he said, this time engaging the translator clipped to Truman’s dressing gown.

“I am in Conference Room B, with eight living representatives of the Klingon Empire and one deceased. Any Klingon deaths will result in the destruction of cities on Earth. The Empire wishes to negotiate the terms of our surrender.”

“We’re not going to surrender, are we?” Daley said.

“I don’t intend to sell the citizens of this country into slavery. Veep is POTUS per Article II.”

“Understood, sir. Veep is secure.”

“Good to hear.”

“Enough!” The Klingon beside him plucked the phone from his hands. “You will address the people of this region and inform them of the consequences of resistance.”

Truman scrutinized the Klingon’s decorated armor and weapons along with the proud set of his jaw. “Tell me, how would your people respond, were their leader to give such an order?”

“They would die on their feet with their weapons in their hands.”

Truman firmed his stance and looked up into the face of his captor. “And what makes you think my people will be any different?”

The Klingon eyed him with unconcealed contempt. “Humans are weak and soft as worms. They know nothing of struggle or honor.”

Perhaps in the three centuries they had been pulled forward in time, humanity had grown soft and weak willed. Truman frankly doubted that, but regardless, his humanity had not overthrown the tyranny of the Axis powers just to hand themselves over to hostile aliens without a fight. He allowed himself a faint smile. “You don’t know us at all.”

*

The bus turned off the road to Seoul almost as soon as it left the makeshift medical camp, taking the road to the airfield just outside of town. Spock sat stiffly in the seat by the window with his arm locked around Jim’s waist, hoping to spare him the worst of the bumps. Jim, in turn, had his left leg pressed tight against the remains of Spock’s right to stabilize him as well. They formed a sort of tripod, their center of mass directly between them, strong together where they were, not weak, perhaps, but less strong alone.

Across the aisle, Dr. McCoy was holding Dr. Hunnicutt in a similar fashion. Hunnicutt stared straight ahead, silent except for the occasional involuntary cry when the bus swerved or hit a pothole. Spock knew that given the technology of the early nineteen fifties he would likely lose much of the use of his right hand if he didn’t lose the arm entirely. The potential loss of Doctor Hunnicutt’s livelihood—no that was the wrong word—his calling had been a greater pain to bear than the physical pain of the injury itself. 

The bus stopped at a checkpoint and was directed onto a side road, this one paved, that led to a leveled stretch of gravel on which planes and helicopters were parked. The half-cylinder of a corrugated metal Quonset hut squatted at the edge of the airfield. The bus pulled alongside and came to a halt. Both Jim and Hunnicutt flinched at the sound of booted feet approaching, but this time, the soldiers crowding around the sides and rear of the bus were dressed in uniforms marked with American flags. 

Once the stretchers holding injured Koreans were transferred to the chunky, gray aircraft a few dozen meters away, the men of the MASH unit followed. Jim hauled himself to his feet, making room for Spock to pull himself into the aisle and swing forward bracing himself on the seat backs on either side. Spock paused at the door to make sure his beanie--Radar's beanie, he realized with a quickly suppressed pang--was covering his ears, then accepted his crutches from Major Winchester behind him and swung down onto the gravel surface  
.  
The air was warm and damp, the sun a diminishing sliver on the western horizon. A few soldiers stared openly, but most seemed preoccupied with their own tasks. Spock hurried to catch up, but found himself standing next to Jim at the rear door of the aircraft while Potter punched his finger into the chest of a neatly pressed major whose expression of understated displeasure would not have been out of place on a Vulcan. 

"This patient needs specialized treatment, Major Tyler. He needs to go back to the States." Potter leaned into the taller man, his face growing pinker by the second.

Hunnicutt swayed on his feet beside Dr. McCoy, his eyes glassy with pain and blood loss. "I'm not leaving unless he's with me," McCoy said firmly  
.  
"I don't have time for this," Major Tyler said, shaking his head. "The three of you are supposed to be secure and in the States ASAP. You can deal with the fallout from having this guy tagging along." He waved the four of them into the plane. Potter stood at attention and saluted. Major Winchester, Dr. Freedman, and Father Mulcahy stood beside him, though only Winchester echoed the salute.

The four of them were hurried aboard, the plane already beginning to taxi toward the runway before its passengers were completely strapped into place. They rose into the air, Spock finding both the unrelenting noise of the engines and the change in air pressure acutely painful. He retreated into meditation, lulled by the sleepy proximity of his bond mate and the monotonous cloud cover outside the window. 

*  
Jim adjusted the high collar and starched jacket of his new uniform. He had hoped when hearing that the three of them were to be provided naval uniforms befitting their ranks that he would be out of olive drab at last, but the uniforms they were issued were a brownish green shade not much different from the army uniforms they had just left behind. The rank and service patches declared him a captain and naval aviator. Spock looked far more comfortable in the commander’s uniform he had been issued than Jim felt in his, though Jim suspected he was just better at feigning ease. There was a tiny difference, likely unnoticeable to anyone not in the service, between their uniforms and those of the other officers roaming Clark airbase in the Philippines. Below the wings, a small patch embroidered in gold thread, a Starfleet chevron no bigger than Jim’s thumbprint. He swiped a thumb across the threads.

Bones had disappeared into the flurry of medical personnel who had surrounded BJ Hunnicutt as soon as they’d gotten off the plane, leaving Jim and Spock at the mercy of Major Tyler and very solicitous quartermaster. Once they were dressed to the men’s satisfaction, Tyler ushered them to a small meeting room. A general sat at the head of the table, flanked by his aides. Tyler introduced them. “General Ridgway, this is Captain James Kirk and Commander Spock.”

“Have a seat. We have much to discuss,” Ridgway said. “First. About six hours ago, President Truman was abducted from what should have been secure quarters at Blair House by persons unknown. Two members of the Secret Service were killed. They bear wounds that do not resemble anything we’ve seen before.”

Ridgway’s aide pushed photographs across the table. “Your medical officer identified the wounds as resembling disruptor fire.”

Jim nodded grimly. “That’s a Klingon weapon. The President was likely beamed aboard a vessel in orbit.”

Ridgway nodded. “He was returned an hour ago. Gorevi, do you have the tape?”

The aide flipped the switch on a reel to reel beside him. An anchor's voice, the practiced, calm cadence backed with static and only the faintest waver of fear, emerged. "Our best information at this time is that the following additional cities have been attacked by the extraterrestrial forces referring to themselves as the Klingon Empire: New York City, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Guangzhou China, and Paris, France. The Klingons warn that resistance will be answered with the execution of residents of the resisting country and that any deaths of Klingon ‘warriors’ will be repaid with the destruction of further cities." He paused, and a rustle of paper could be heard.

"We are replaying an address given by United States' president Harry S. Truman thirty minutes ago." The anchor paused. "I urge all Americans to listen carefully to the President's words at this unprecedented time." There was a click, the sound of the radio moving from live air to tape.

"My fellow Americans," the President began.

He cleared his throat. After a long and awkward pause, Jim could hear guttural Klingon syllables, but the speaker was too far from the microphone for him to make out the words. The President continued. "My fellow Americans. Today we face the greatest challenge humanity has ever known. An Empire from afar has come to our shores, demanded our allegiance and obedience, and demonstrated our helplessness in the face of overwhelming weapons. I have seen the massive warships of this Empire with my own eyes, and remain in the company of their representatives. As a consequence, I hereby declare, as laid out in Article II, Section I, Clause 6 of the United States Constitution, the full and unconditional surrender of the United States of America to the representatives of the Klingon Empire. The Empire has made it clear that resistance will be met with lethal force. As such, I hereby order the American people to cooperate. Cooperate in the way that Mahatma Gandhi cooperated with the British Empire. Cooperate in the tradition of Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman, two fine examples of submission in the face of power. We will survive this challenge as a nation and as a people."

The recording cut off abruptly. 

Jim turned to Spock. "When the Klingons figure out what he said they'll kill him."

"Very likely, Captain," Spock agreed. "One can hope that their knowledge of Earth's history is limited."

“I take it you are familiar with the United States’ Constitution,” Ridgway said.

“We are. Is the Vice President in a secure location?”

“He is. For the moment, we are keeping that location need to know. Do these Klingons have any weaknesses?”

“All species have weaknesses, General,” Spock said. “However, given this planet’s level of technological development, there is no appreciable chance you will emerge victorious without aid. At best, you can buy time.”

“And with the aid of your Federation?” Ridgway’s tone grew suspicious.

“If the Federation can be persuaded to help, we might be able to negotiate better terms. The real power players here are the Organians. If we can persuade them to intervene on your behalf, the Klingons will have no choice but to leave you alone.” Jim collected a piece of paper and sketched the relative locations of Klingon and Federation space, the Organians, and HR7783.

“It is by no means certain that they will be inclined to help,” Spock noted blandly.

Ridgway held up a hand. “What can you tell me about the Organians?”

“The Organians are technologically farther beyond us than we are beyond flint spear points. A few years ago they imposed a demilitarized zone between the Federation and the Empire within which they decide which of us has control of any given system. The Organians have also made it impossible for our respective militaries to attack each other directly. Asking for their aid is risky. They might not consider interfering to be worth their while, or they might decide that the Federation and the Klingon Empire have bothered them enough and impose their will in a way we won’t like.”

“So what you’re telling me is there’s no way,” Ridgway said.

“What we’re telling you is that we’re up against a very difficult scenario. Not an impossible one. Truman’s passive resistance idea will confuse the Klingons, probably buy you some time. It’s not a bad plan.”

“Not bad isn’t good.” Ridgway stood. “But it’s better than nothing. We’ll make do.” He shook Jim’s hand and dipped his head in Spock’s direction, then left with his aides. 

The Major appeared with Bones and Dr. Hunnicutt in tow, the latter with his arm expertly bound in a cast and sling and looking pinker and more robust than he had when they arrived. "Look alive, gentlemen, the plane's ready for you. Nonstop flight to Los Angeles, refuel and on to Offutt--don't want to take the chance of marooning you in Honolulu."

"I could think of worse places to be marooned," Bones noted. He took BJ by the good arm to lead him down the hall. Jim and Spock followed.

They climbed into the second plane of the day, this one smaller, sleeker, and clearly designed to carry dignitaries rather than rank-and-file soldiers. A young woman in a crisp, skirted uniform led Jim to a cushy high backed seat. “Can I get you a nightcap?” she asked.

“Not on duty,” he replied with some regret.

She smiled. "We have soda pop, Captain Kirk," she said, clearly reading his name off his uniform.

“Carbonated sugar water,” Spock clarified.

“Like Nehi,” Jim said. He grimaced. “Water’s fine. What time is it?”

“It’s the wrong side of midnight. You’ll probably want to get some sleep soon.” Their attendant disappeared into the forward compartment, leaving the four of them with Major Tyler and a man Kirk didn't recognize, a commodore by his uniform. The commodore slid into the seat next to Jim and extended a hand. "Arlo Dodgeson," he said. "It's a sixteen hour flight, might as well get comfortable.” 

Spock finished stowing his gear. "Major, has there been any word as to the whereabouts of the soldiers left at the 4077th to activate the transmitter?"

Commodore Dodgeson studied Spock's face closely before answering, no doubt searching for the more obvious signs of his alien heritage--at least those not covered by his borrowed beanie. "Nobody's been able to get anywhere near the site. The place is crawling with those Klingons. I know the signal got off, though so far as I know we haven't gotten an answer back."

"I'm sorry, Commander. The four members of the unit who remained behind never checked in at Kimpo. They must have been killed or captured." Tyler, to his credit, did sound genuinely regretful.

Spock's lips and eyes tightened just a fraction, but his distress poured over their bond. "I see." 

Across from them, Bones didn't bother to hide his reaction. "Must have been killed or captured? Is anyone even trying to find them?"

"We are doing everything in our power," Tyler said, which Jim mentally translated as "We're doing exactly nothing that's likely to be successful." 

“Well, you damn well better find them. Those four are about the best people I’ve met in this Army. In any service, frankly.” His hands curled into fists. He visibly forced them to uncurl and showed his back to all of them, pretending to adjust an already sleeping BJ’s position. 

The young woman returned with their water glasses, then pulled pillows and blankets for them out of the overheads and dimmed the lights. Jim’s body refused to allow him to push it any further and he fell asleep with his head resting on Spock’s shoulder.

*

"Captain Una, we're picking up a subspace transmission from HR7783b." Uhura turned in her chair. "It's a recorded message, encrypted with a recent Starfleet code."

"Decrypt and play it for us, will you, Lieutenant?" Una said. She swallowed the buoying sensation of sudden hope in her chest while she waited for the signal to be decoded.

The silence that fell on the bridge was so complete that Una became acutely aware of the hum of the cooling system and the air recyclers humming in the background and the faint high pitched ringing from the left helm console, which Chekov had complained about but Una hadn't noticed until that moment. There was a static pop then a very young man’s voice said, "You're on, sir."

Another static softened pause, and a familiar baritone filled the room. "This is Commander Spock of the USS Enterprise. I am currently stranded on a Grantville-Alexander class Earth duplicate along with Captain James Kirk and Doctor Leonard McCoy. Local date is May 10th, 1951 Old Earth dating system. The location of this transmitter is 37°45', 47.5" North, 127°06', 21.1" East. The planet is currently threatened with imminent invasion by the Klingon Empire. Request immediate aid for the planetary population justified by prior interference. The Captain and I recommend taking the planet's case to the Organians in an effort to modify the current treaty. Again, invasion is imminent. Please expedite assistance." There was another pop of static, and the recording ended.

Una couldn’t shake an irrational sense of urgency. The men from the Enterprise had been on HR7783b for nearly a month. Surely they could hold on for another few hours. "Mr. Sulu, Mr. Riley, plot a course to the duplicate Earth, best speed." 

"Aye Captain," the two men chorused. 

Sulu punched in one of the evasion patterns the three of them had built over the last day. The ship shot across the border into Klingon space, leaving their Klingon hangers on far behind. They would likely catch up in minutes, but just getting out in front of the pair of Birds of Prey assigned to keep track of them would shave hours off the time it would take them to reach the Earth duplicate.  
The bridge vibrated with the nervous energy of the four officers seated around Una. Uhura tapped manicured nails against her console, her face still and pinched with concentration while she listened to subspace for any further communication. Sulu and Riley were fully occupied dodging the Klingons on the Enterprise's tail, and Chekov crouched over the science station, tapping course corrections into his panel to be transmitted to the helm.

Una took over one of the perimeter stations and called up a detailed history of mid twentieth century Earth. She needed to know what resources this planet had to defend itself, and who the major players were.


	5. In which Peg gets a surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk, Spock, McCoy and BJ return to the United States. The distress call brings the Enterprise back to the Earth duplicate.

The Enterprise managed to reach HR7783b in just over four hours. There had been no further transmissions from the planet's surface, though Uhura had found a second, text only message embedded in the distress call using a private code known only to the ship's senior staff. While Enterprise sheltered in the gravity well of a gas giant 26 AU from the Earth duplicate, Una sat in the ready room off the bridge with Scotty, Chekov, and Uhura, going over the more detailed report. 

According to the message, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had spent the last few weeks at a mobile military hospital near the front of a war in which the Korean Peninsula was being fought over by two major powers. Both the captain and first officer had been critically wounded, but were recovering. They had intercepted communications from Klingon vessels in the area and had advance knowledge of a planned invasion by a single Klingon House, Arok. Reasoning, possibly spuriously, that the altered timeline rendered the Prime Directive moot, they were providing tactical assistance to the authorities in an effort to limit loss of life. Una was flying directly into a diplomatic nightmare.

"Mr. Chekov, have you been able to obtain more detailed readings of the planet?" Una asked.

Chekov laced his fingers together on the table and leaned forward. "I have, Sir. There have been several explosions on the planet's surface large enough to inject debris into the upper atmosphere. The lack of radioactive signatures rules out local weapons, but the size and residue is consistent with photon torpedo strikes on a planetary target."

A photon torpedo's yield changed radically with the amount of antimatter loaded into it. In ship to ship combat, relatively high yields were necessary to disrupt shields and damage ships in the vacuum of space. Against planetary targets, a single torpedo armed with a kilogram of antimatter and dropped on a city could kill millions. "If the Klingons keep that up they won't have a planet left to conquer," Una said. "This isn't like them. Klingons generally prefer hand to hand combat to mass destruction. Mr. Sulu, find me everything you can on House Arok."

*

BJ Hunnicutt had spent the last couple of hours with his face pressed against the window of the plane, even though the view below alternated between clouds and unrelieved ocean blue. He was going home, back to familiar words, familiar food, familiar antiseptic hospitals built of brick and mortar rather than fabric and flimsy wood frames. He knew that the America he was returning to was probably changed beyond recognition already and on borrowed time, and that he too had been irreparably damaged, but he was happy to be going home anyway. Intellectually, he knew his sanguine acceptance of the situation was due to the blessed fog of morphine, but he couldn't bring himself to mind all that much.

Beside him, Bones hunched in his seat with his bag in his lap, rubbing the worn leather handle with his thumb. BJ reached out with his left arm. "Hey buddy, we're going home. It's going to be okay," he said.

"I'm not going home. Margaret's not going home," he muttered through gritted teeth.

"Major Houlihan's not wounded," BJ said, momentarily confused.

"Margaret could be dead for all we know," Bones snapped. BJ recoiled and took refuge in the view out the window. "I'm sorry, BJ, I shouldn't yell at you. You're high as a kite and not responsible for what you say."

"Major Houlihan and Hawkeye stayed behind with Wilson," BJ remembered. "They got out okay, right?" Bones was silent for too long, long enough for BJ's morphine slowed brain to connect the pieces of what he'd heard. "They didn't get out okay."

"They didn't make the checkpoint at Kimpo. For all we know they're all dead." He said each name slowly, with a heavy pause in between each one. "Margaret, Hawkeye, Radar, and Klinger."

BJ felt as though Bones had reached into his chest, enclosed his heart in his fist, and squeezed. Hawkeye dead? It seemed impossible to even conceive. Hawkeye could not be dead, not when BJ was wrapped in chemical cotton batting and couldn't even remember how to feel. Someone was making a noise, a wavering cry, almost a whine. His throat hurt.

A soft, steady voice broke through his disorientation. "I have reason to believe that Corporal O'Reilly is alive. If he lives, it is possible the others have survived as well, and have merely been delayed."

"That's not a lot to hang our hopes on, Spock," Bones muttered.

"It is all I have, Doctor."

BJ turned his face back to the window. He slept. He woke to another shot of morphine and slept harder until Bones roused him to eat pudding and canned peaches. The possibility that Hawkeye was dead was too terrible to contemplate. His mind slid off it like hot ice, an impossibility. Was Hawkeye being held by North Koreans? That thought was terrible enough, but what if he had been taken somewhere else, somewhere as inaccessible as the moon? Bones had been tight lipped about the behavior of Klingons toward prisoners, but any Empire that would use nuclear weapons on cities without so much as a hello probably wasn't going to put its prisoners up in a four star hotel.

The clouds cleared. They were no longer flying over water, but over land blocked into the geometric patterns of farm fields. "Where are we?" he said.

"Coming up on Offutt Air Force Base," Major Tyler said. "In six hours we'll be at the operations center we've set up outside Ottumwa."

"Ottumwa?" BJ said, puzzled. Wasn't Radar from Ottumwa? Wasn't Peg in Ottumwa?

"We already had men there, and with you all having a connection to the O'Reilly boy, it was a ready bolthole."

"I'm gonna see my wife," he realized. "I'm gonna see my wife!" For a moment, he forgot entirely about Hawkeye in anticipation of seeing Peg's face. His joy evaporated in seconds when he remembered. "I'd hoped to introduce her to Hawkeye." How could he have forgotten, even for a second? His chest felt hot and heavy. He'd expected his homecoming would be shadowed by Hawkeye. He'd worried that she would feel betrayed that he'd fallen so hard for the man despite her encoded permission, he'd feared that the two would meet and not get along-- there had even been a faint, whispering fear that he wouldn't have to choose between them because they would choose each other instead. Now he would be bringing a ghost home to his wife instead.

The plane dropped and he swallowed, suddenly lightheaded. The fields below grew more distinct as the plane descended. He could see the gridwork of Omaha roads, the gray lines of highway and, a few hundred feet lower, cars speckling the highway and the green puffs of trees. The final descent was quicker than he expected, as it always was. One minute he was staring down at buildings the size of toys and the next the landing gear met the runway with a rough, rubbery sound and he felt the deceleration in the press of the seat belt against his hips.

Before Bones let him out of the seat, he unwrapped the sling around BJ's shoulder enough to free the fingers and pinched each one to check that they were perfused. BJ still felt nothing. He wondered if Peg would want a husband with only one hand, who wouldn't be able to support her or even hold his own child. His cheeks were wet. The drugs kept his misery at a remove, as though he were watching someone else cry. Bones ran his whistling scanner over the hand. "It's stable enough for now," he said.

"Whose hand is that?" he heard himself say. He knew it was a silly question, but he couldn't quite figure out why.

"It's your hand," Bones said. 

BJ shook his head. "I'm just carrying it for someone."

"Hold on, look." Bones carefully unhooked the sling around BJ's neck and took BJ's hand, setting it on the opposite shoulder. "Feel your arm."

BJ ran his hand down his arm to the elbow, then let it fall into his lap. "Why?"

Bones picked up BJ's hand and ran it back over his elbow and down the other hand in its cast. "It's attached. It's your hand."

"If you say so," he said, just to be agreeable. If he were in his right mind he'd have shouted at the man for teasing him.

Bones shook his head. "It's all right, BJ. Just. This hand you're carrying around. It's important. It needs to be kept safe, okay?"

"Okay." The fact that he was carrying around someone else's hand was unnerving, but he was willing to do it if it was important to Bones. "Is it Hawkeye's hand?"

Bones scrubbed his hand over his face and into his hair, tugging on it briefly. His eyes rolled skyward. "No BJ, it's not Hawkeye's hand." 

"Bones?" BJ asked.

"Yeah BJ?"

"Where's my hand?"

*

"I have a signal!" Chekov shouted.

The Enterprise continued on its parabolic pathway, skirting close to the planet too quickly for the Klingon ships to react, then swooping away. They were dogged by Birds of Prey, but their complex trajectories had allowed them to buzz the planet for a few moments at a time to scan for the transponders embedded in Starfleet uniform patches.

While Sulu and Riley made the Enterprise dance and dodge, Chekov analyzed the sensor data. "I have located Mr. Spock and Doctor McCoy's transponders."

"Get to the transporter room. See if you can get a lock on the transponders," Una said. Chekov bolted for the door.

"Mr. Sulu, see if you can give us as long as possible over the transponder site. Riley and Uhura, you're with me. We'll meet Dr. M'Benga on the way to the transporter room."

They collected sidearms outside the transporter room.

"Beam us to where the transponders are found. If our people are in the middle of negotiations with locals, it won't do for them to disappear."

Chekov shook his head. "There will not be long enough to scan for a safe landing site. You could materialize inside a tree. Very bad."

"All right, just snatch our guys and we'll hope they know where Kirk is."

"Coming up on closest approach. Triangulating. I have life signs." Chekov bent over the transporter console.

Shapes shimmered onto the transporter platform and solidified. An elderly woman bent under a basket stood next to a little girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old. The girl screamed and began chattering. After a few seconds, the translator identified the language and began translating seamlessly. "It is the spacemen! From the radio! They're going to kill us!" She looked behind her, revealing a ribbon of blue in the scarf she wore in her dark hair, the Starfleet chevron artfully arranged to glint above her ponytail. Seeing no exit behind her and no way out in front, the girl huddled against the rear wall of the transporter platform with her face in her hands. 

The old woman hobbled over to her and crouched beside her without removing her burden. "Come. Face your fate with equanimity." She lifted the girl to her feet and together they stared defiantly at Una. They must be aware of the orbital bombardment and mistake the Enterprise for the Earth's attackers. But these two, in possession of Spock and McCoy's clothes, were the best clues she had to their location. She had to try.

She took a deep breath, tugged at her shirt and said, "My name is Captain Una, and I mean you no harm."

The elderly woman squeezed the child's hand, but said nothing. 

She tried again. "I'm with the Federation. We're here to help." She hoped that was true. She walked over to the child and touched the chevron in her hair. "This belonged to my friend. I need to find him. Can you tell me where you found these clothes?"

"Say nothing," the woman said to the child.

Una turned away from them. "We'll hold them here until we can figure out how to get people down to the planet's surface while dodging all these Birds of Prey. Uhura, take them to quarters along with a security detail. I need you back on the bridge, so see to it the detail is all female."

"Yes, sir," Uhura said.

"We'll talk later," she promised their pair of accidental prisoners on her way out the door. "Chekov, you're with me. We need to get down to the surface on the next pass if we're going to find our people."

*

Peg sat on the porch with Erin in her lap. The baby divided her time between watching the chickens scratching for grubs in the yard and chewing on her bare toes. The news had been ominously bad before it became startlingly absent. The local news still ran out of Davenport and most of the radio stations still broadcast as usual, but there was no national news and none of the live TV out of New York ran at all. The alien invaders had dropped something on San Francisco, then over the next day on Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia that made Fat Man and Little Boy look like firecrackers. The bombs had been dropped all over the world, she'd heard. At least fifteen cities. Even forewarned as she had been, having Radar's horrifying prediction confirmed had been a descent into unreality.

But the birds still sang and pooped in the trees. The chickens still scratched for grubs, and tiny sprouts of potatoes, squash, and beans still poked green through the dark turned earth of the garden. They listened to the radio out of duty and Peg's hope that she might get word of the situation in Korea, but the news was so far removed from her experience it seemed like fiction. At the farm, out of town and at the end of a long gravel road, everything seemed so normal it was hard to believe the world she knew was never going to be the same. She tried to think of their little house in San Francisco gone up in ash and smoke and her mind refused to believe it. Not on such a bright spring day.

The crunch of tires on gravel caught her attention. She stood and adjusted Erin in her arms. The van rolling up the drive was nondescript, a limey green that had been popular a couple of years before, free of rust but none too clean. It pulled in next to the pair of shiny black cars gradually developing a speckling of bird droppings from the sugar maples overhead.

One of their government guests stepped out onto the porch beside her, followed a moment later by Mrs. O'Reilly. The breeze played with the older woman's skirt and apron, pressing it against her knees. A man in Army uniform, a Major by his stripes, got out of the driver's seat, settled his cap on his head and opened the near door. Two men in Navy uniforms emerged, one gaunt but bright eyed, with the look of someone recovering from a serious illness, the other sallow faced with odd features, something about the set of his eyes and the angle of his cheekbones. He was missing the majority of his right leg. The major reached into the vehicle and pulled out a pair of crutches for the amputee. 

"It looks a little like my family's place in Riverside," the frail looking one said.

The Major walked around the front of the van to the other side. She could hear a door being opened. Two more men emerged, one supporting the other. A Navy officer supported a younger man in undress greens. The injured man was tall even stooped over, with tousled blonde hair and blue eyes. His arm was wrapped tight to his body by a too-white sling. He looked so much like BJ it made her blink away tears. They stopped in the middle of the yard, swarmed by chickens. He stared at her face. "Peg," he said, quietly.

"BJ?"

He nodded.

"BJ!" She ran to him, joggling Erin, who crowed in her arms. She was about to crush him into a hug when a gentle, but firm hand stopped her.

"Gently," the stranger beside her husband said. "He's a little tipsy with morphine and none too steady on his feet."

"It's okay, Bones," BJ said, his voice a miracle. "Let me hug my wife." She wrapped her free arm gingerly around his waist and lay her head on his chest, careful not to press too hard on his injured arm. He kissed her forehead. "I'd like to sit down, have a look at this big girl we've got here. Is that hair?"

"Little bit of hair, yes," she chuckled.

With the man called Bones on one side and Peg on the other, they helped BJ up the stairs and into the porch swing. She sat down beside him so he could run his fingers over her baby face and capture her little feet. 

Bones admonished, "If you have any trouble getting up you call me, I'll help you in the house." He touched his Navy cap with his fingers and she saw the wings on his breast. "Ma'am," he said, before leaving them alone.

She breathed his scent, masked as it was with strong army soap, and kicked the porch swing into gentle motion with one foot. He nuzzled his cheek into her hair and sighed. There would be time later to think about San Francisco and alien invasions and whatever had happened to BJ's arm. It was a beautiful afternoon for a miracle, and Peg intended to enjoy it for as long as it lasted.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments as always are greatly appreciated. Feel free to indulge in historical speculation.


End file.
